It is known for example from commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/477,359 filed Feb. 7, 1990 U.S. Pat. No. 5,016,676 (European patent application 344,076) to provide a shuttleless loom with a deweaving system that allows a misfed or broken pick to be removed from the warp. Such an arrangement is connected with means for detecting a break or misfeed of a pick so that it automatically stops the loom and removes the bad pick. It can even be associated with a device that switches over to another weft supply in the event that the bad pick was made because of problems with its supply.
Such an arrangement works with the pneumatic equipment already present on a shuttleless loom which invariably uses jets of air to convey the weft across the warp. Other such devices for shuttleless or jet-type looms are shown in European published application 309,013 filed by D. Lewyllie based on a Belgian priority of Aug. 26, 1987 and 318,861 filed by P. Velechovsky based on a Czechoslovakian priority Dec. 12, 1987.
The structure is different with a shuttle-type loom, in particular of the standard type having a pair of needle-type grippers that can be moved to the center of the shed so that the gripper holding the leading end of the weft yarn advances it to the center of the shed and hands it off to the other oppositely advanced gripper which pulls it all the way through as the first gripper retracts oppositely. Here a weft break normally results in the loom being shut down. Then the bad pick is removed manually, the weft is rethreaded in its guide, and the machine is restarted. Separating the bad pick from the warp, pulling it out of the shed, monitoring its complete removal, and keeping track of the weft end outside the loom are all fairly difficult problems in such a shuttle-type loom to which no satisfactory solution currently exists.